Leveson Inquiry

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Friday 11th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I am sorry to start on a slightly sour note but, in one regard anyway, the debate in your Lordships’ House will be less well informed than that at the other end. The House authorities have determined that we may not have printed copies of the full Leveson report, only of the summary. Of course, noble Lords could all access Leveson if they have 50 hours to sit in the Library reading it or were granted the skill, denied to some of us, to go through 2,000 pages on screen. The ground for the refusal was cost. I could go into that a great deal. I know it would be high if every Member of the Lords was given a copy. However, a compromise would have been to have given a copy to those who had put down their names to speak in this debate and who wanted it. This was turned down.

I asked the Clerk of the Parliaments whether he could provide any precedent for a report which was the subject of a specific debate in this House being denied to speakers. None has been cited. I know this is a subsidiary point but it is not unimportant since Leveson’s summary, although a good attempt, is not a proper reflection of the full weight of his report. I hope therefore that if noble Lords share my feelings on this matter, they will tell the Clerk of the Parliaments and the Chairman of Committees so, so that the House is not put in this invidious position ever again.

I speak as a former deputy to the editor at two national newspapers. I had responsibility at the Times for complaints, for the PCC and for libel. Whether that makes me a poacher turned gamekeeper or a gamekeeper turned poacher, I am not quite sure. I must say that I found some of the post-Leveson debate, although very interesting, a bit depressing because it seems that most of it has been making a mountain out of a molehill. There is really terribly little between 90% of the participants in the debate. All of us want an independent, self-regulatory system that works. None of us wants statutory control over content. Yet over this gnat of whether there should be statutory underpinning, we have strained and strained. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, for whose views on these matters I have the greatest respect, that a Permanent Secretary instructed by his Minister to find eight reasons why something could not be done would not have managed to exceed the efforts he just made at the end of his speech. That is why the actual Bills that exist to do this are so brief, succinct and effective.

The Prime Minister did not help with his remark that legislation would cross a Rubicon. Is it a Rubicon? Honestly, it is more the River Piddle after a prolonged drought. I do not think there is any slippery slope here. There is certainly none so long as it is clear that any statutory underpinning is to underpin the process by which wrong can be righted and not to get at the specific content of newspapers, which is a matter for them and their editors.

Having said that, I would prefer a minimum of legislation. There are well worn reasons of principle why this should be so, but I am afraid that mine is a pure matter of practice. The problems we have seen are largely a matter of rogue cultures in newspapers. Changes in culture are usually more successfully achieved if organisations embrace them from within rather than them being imposed from without. One reason why the Advertising Standards Authority, on which I once had the privilege to sit, is an effective authority is that the entire industry accepts it. If statute makes it harder for the press to understand the change in culture that is required, we should try and keep it to a minimum.

However, there is one problem which has not yet been resolved by the system of contracts proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. It is no good setting up the finest system in the world if some newspapers choose not to join it or, more insidiously, if they join it but keep on saying, “Oh, if you don’t do what we want, we’ll withdraw and you’ll lose our money”. That is what prejudices the bureaucracies of those organisations to listen to their press members and not to their independent members. I do not think we have cracked that one yet. I am not wholly confident that the incentive of better treatment from the courts for newspapers which sign up will be sufficient. This needs to be looked at further.

I have one other proposal, which bears on the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham. No one much likes the idea that Ofcom should frank the self-regulatory system. There is, however, an existing alternative: the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, chaired by the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay. It would be worth everyone having a look at that. It has the enormous advantage of being extremely low-profile and therefore in many ways ideally equipped to take on this demanding task. I ask those who are responsible in these negotiations to look at that.

It is crucial that the all-party negotiations should succeed, because only then will we have a stable basis for a system. I should like to see a system that minimised the need for legislation. If it can be done without, no one would be more delighted than I would. If it requires something, I hope that those on the press side will retain a sense of proportion about the small amount of statute that is required. If it can be done by agreement without statute, that would be a wonderful outcome, but let there be no doubt: if no such agreement can be reached, statute there must be, and statute that will work.